The old masters were, as a rule, skeptical of the value of free Negro labor.

Carl Schurz thought this attitude boded ill for the future: "A belief, conviction, or prejudice, or whatever you may call it," he said, "so widely spread and apparently deeply rooted as this, that the Negro will not work without physical compulsion, is certainly calculated to have a very serious influence upon the conduct of the people entertaining it.

It naturally produced a desire to preserve slavery in its original form as much and as long as possible...

or to introduce into the new system that element of physical compulsion which would make the Negro work." The Negro wished to be free to leave his job when he pleased, but, as Benjamin C.Truman stated in his report to President Johnson, a "result of the settled belief in the Negro's inferiority, and in the necessity that he should not be left to himself without a guardian, is that in some sections he is discouraged from leaving his old master.

I have known of planters who considered it an offence against neighborhood courtesy for another to hire their old hands, and in two instances that were reported the disputants came to blows over the breach of etiquette." The new Freedmen's Bureau insisted upon written contracts, except for day laborers, and this undoubtedly kept many Negroes from working regularly, for they were suspicious of contracts.